“The disaster for Sauber”

This is the headline Swiss newspaper Blick led with following the Austrian GP. The associated picture was of a jubilant Pascal Wehrlein celebrating his point scoring finish with the rest of the Manor F1 race team.

Sauber are known to be in deep financial trouble again, and having scored no points this season, Wehrlein’s opportunistic drive in Spielberg may well mean Sauber loses around $40m in funding from Ecclestone and FOM.

The Swiss team are in last in 11th place in the F1 constructors’ table – a position which receives no financial support from Ecclestone and FOM. The team have responded by pulling out of the post British GP test in Silverstone I an effort to save cash.

Sauber also missed the Barcelona test following the Spanish GP.

During the 2016 season, the Sauber C35 has had no development worthy of note, though an upgrade was expected for the Canadian GP. This new aero package cannot now be delivered prior to Silverstone which is why Sauber has withdrawn from the post-race test.

An announcement just appeared on twitter, “As we introduce the #C35 aero package at a later stage, testing in Silverstone is cancelled considering cost effectiveness.”

In times gone by, Sauber were viewed almost as Ferrari’s B team – often giving Maranello’s young driver hopefuls a seat in F1. Further, Sauber would be there year in year out to run Ferrari power units which was in Maranello’s interest and therefore gave the Swiss team an element of financial security.

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9 responses to ““The disaster for Sauber””

this just highlights again the nonsense of the tv/race promotion and prize money distribution.

While I can’t stand the approach Sauber have taking over the past few years (see Giedo, Adrian, Simona etc) , the bottom line is that there are still a very large number of people employed at the team whose livelihoods are threatened by the insane manner in which income generated by the sport is either siphoned off or ‘shared’ between the participants.

Manor would not exist at all were it not for the funding secured by Bianchi’s points in Monaco handing them at least 2 years of payouts. Should Sauber magically nick 2 points more than Manor over the rest of the year how secure will Manor’s long term future look?

Personally I prefer to see a full grid rather than 20 car races, that would require proper distribution of the sports income between 13 teams, not the current half-hearted effort for 10 teams!

I read it also somewhere on the internet. But I immediately thought of non existing Russian deals or bank tramsfers which take forever to be ‘cleared’. In reality I think we will witness the second coming of Maldonado.

“The Swiss team are in last in 11th place in the F1 constructors’ table – a position which receives no financial support from Ecclestone and FOM. ”

Not true! Haas will not get any money this year meaning that Sauber will get 10th place money. The ten teams with the best two-year average over three years will get the money. Haas has to wait until 2018 to receive any price money.

The tragedy is that there are 10’s of millions of dollars (francs), if not 100’s, going into F1 from Swiss companies, but all have either abandoned Sauber or been poached by bigger teams or Bernie himself (FOM) at one time or another. Rolex, UBS, Allianz, Zurich to only name the track sponsors Bernie rakes money in from. If any of these Swiss based companies would support their little national F1 team, which has proven with decent funding it fights regularly in the mid pack and even surprises the top 5 every now and again (granted not for the last few years when it has been struggling for funds). The Swiss should deport Bernie simply for robbing their team of so much potential funding.